The Aleutian Islands are the northern boundary of the Pacific Ocean’s ‘ring of fire’. Starting just off the Alaska Peninsula, an arc of more than 300 volcanic islands stretches for almost 2,000km across the Pacific. While the majority of the islands are part of the state of Alaska, a few of the westernmost islands are Russian territory1. While the Aleutian arc continues on mainland Alaska, we’ll focus on a few of the more prominent volcanic islands and other points of note. The islands are generally clustered into five groups – Fox, Islands of Four Mountains, Andreanof, Rat and…